YEARNING FOR FREEDOM

Protesters in Tehran: 'Death to the dictator'

'Powder keg' in Iran as police tear-gas demonstrators at parliament

Art Moore, co-author of the best-selling book "See Something, Say Nothing," entered the media world as a PR assistant for the Seattle Mariners and a correspondent covering pro and college sports for Associated Press Radio. He reported for a Chicago-area daily newspaper and was senior news writer for Christianity Today magazine and an editor for Worldwide Newsroom before joining WND shortly after 9/11. He earned a master's degree in communications from Wheaton College.

Iran’s semi-official news agency described protests Monday in front of the Iranian parliament as merely a request for lawmakers to “stop rising prices,” but videos distributed via social media indicate a demand for much more.

The protesters, who were confronted by police with tear gas, surrounded the Iranian parliament Monday with chants of “death to high prices.” But the demand escalated to “death to Khamenei,” the ayatollah and supreme ruler, and “death to the dictator,” tweeted Iran analyst Amir Bolurchi, an Iran policy analyst in Washington.

The Telegraph newspaper of London noted it was the first such confrontation after similar demonstrations rocked the country at the start of the year.

On Sunday, protests in the Iranian capital closed its Grand Bazaar and forced two major shopping centers for mobile phones and electronics to close.

Iran is a “powder keg,” tweeted Bolurchi, noting demonstrators in front of parliament were chanting, “Our enemy is right here, they lie when they say it is America.”

Protester also were heard chanting, “We will die, will take back Iran,” and, “Iranians will die, will not accept humiliation,” according to Ali Savafi, a member of the foreign affairs committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a political organization based in France.

As WND reported, emboldened by new sanctions imposed by the United States in the wake of the cancellation of the nuclear agreement, Iranian citizens increasingly have engaged in bold acts of civil disobedience and protests intended ultimately to bring about the overthrow of the mullah-led Islamic regime.

Bloomberg reported Monday the country’s fragile economy has gone into a downward spiral in recent months in anticipation of the U.S. pullout from the 2015 nuclear deal. The Iranian currency, the rial, has plunged against the dollar, inflation was 9.7 percent in May, and the country is in the throes of a credit crisis, Bloomberg said.

Former President Barack Obama was criticized for not supporting the 2009 Iranian Green Protest Movement. Israeli Deputy Minister Michael Oren charged in January that Obama didn’t support the revolution a decade ago because he hoped to reach a deal with Iran on its nuclear weapons, which he signed six years later.

Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky called it the biggest failure to help human rights in modern history.